Friday, December 10, 2010

Healing Injured Heels

Oops, seems clear that some of the WikiLeaks revelations have nipped at some very tender heels. And the damage done thereby may not be readily healed. Particularly as some of them hit the target; the heel in question is an autocrat burdened with dictatorial impulses, and who heartily detests to the point of outraged chagrin being made light of.

For this is not a light-humoured man, but rather a traditional Russian ironman, capable, as serendipitous photographs have demonstrated, of posing as Superbear.

It is an absolute disgrace, an offence against the dignity of democratic freedoms, that the United States is flexing its (rather diminished) influence in attempting to silence Julian Assange, and close down WikiLeaks.

"Maybe, nominate him as a Nobel Prize laureate", the recommendation from President Dmitry Medvedev's office. That's the office of the junior confederate of the senior executive of the Corporation. The grizzled bear himself, erroneously referred to as an "alpha-dog" by American diplomats snarled appropriately.

Some democracy that is, bringing up charges of rape against a man doing his best to accommodate a few raunchy Swedish women. Vladimir Putin knows all about that kind of thing; once you begin a mission, you finish it; ask Georgia; not the peach-cheeked one, the neighbour.

"If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr. Assange in prison? that's what, democracy?" Actually, yes. The alternative is a system such as obtains in Russia, and Russian reporters have a thing or two to say about that.

Not the reporters who dutifully write in the manner and on subjects they are permitted to write about. Those who defy government dictates and honour their profession. The legitimate reporters who put their lives on the line reporting about the corruption and brutality of their government, those reporters.

The ones who are honoured by their peers, those reporters. The ones who have been threatened, who live in constant fear, but continue to write revealing stories, those reporters.

Above all, the highly acclaimed reporters who dug relentlessly for the real background, the real story behind the story, the ones who shamed their government and angered it, those reporters. Those are the reporters who will never again challenge their government by unloosing on the public messages that betray their government's agenda.

They weren't imprisoned. They were slaughtered. Those reporters.

That impassioned puck you thought hit the target, Vladimir? MOOOOO!

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